Generally, a shelf is a flat horizontal plane which is used in a home, business, store, or elsewhere to hold items of value that are being displayed, stored, or offered for sale. It is raised off the ground and usually anchored/supported on its shorter length sides by brackets. It can also be held up by columns or pillars.
A shelf can be attached to a wall or other vertical surface, be suspended from a ceiling, be a part of a free-standing frame unit, or it can be part of a piece of furniture such as a cabinet, bookcase, entertainment center, some headboards, and so on. Usually two to six shelves make up a unit, each shelf being attached perpendicularly to the vertical or diagonal supports and positioned parallel one above the other. Free-standing shelves can be accessible from either one or both longer length sides. A shelf with a hidden internal bracket is termed a floating shelf.
It is known that a shelf is a type of storage enclosures often used in a number of environments, such as schools, fitness centers, industrial, commercial, and military institutions for storage of items, as books, clothing, shoes, and sporting accessories. One form of a storage assembly is a shelving system that comprises of multiple shelves fastened to a wall or cabinet. A shelf attached to the side walls located has attachments to hang clothing in the locker chamber. Additional shelf space is useful to support items and allow shoes and boots to be placed on the locker floor and separated from other items, such as books, papers and backpacks.
Typically, such shelving systems are often used in homes to store and display clothing, books, food, and tools. Also, shelving systems are used in stores to display items of merchandise generally handled as self-service items. For example, display racks are often used in supermarkets to display cans or bottles of soft drinks, the cans or bottles being removable for purchase by the customer in a self-service manner from the display rack.
In many instances, the shelving system requires compacting for moving. A number of shelves have been developed for this purpose. However, they have the disadvantage that the collapsing of a set-up shelf may be effected by compressing the frame sections bearing the supporting trays or the like so that there is danger of an undesired collapse of the shelf in case one of the frame sections meets a resistance, for example, a threshold between two rooms and/or a wall.
Additionally, during the folding up of this shelf arrangement, one must overcome not only the resistance of a spring, but also the resistance of trunnions guided in partially obliquely oriented guide slots. A further disadvantage resides in the fact that the space requirement for a collapsed shelf of this type is relatively large.
Other proposals have involved efficient load bearing shelves that collapse for stowage and portability. The problem with these devices is that they do not provide a multitier, shelf assembly that uses a pair of arched arms that can efficiently distribute the weight of a load, nor are the hinges for folding the assembly sufficiently detachable and pivotal.
Thus, an unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies. Even though the above cited shelving systems meet some of the needs of the market, a shelf assembly having a unique arched arm that carries multiple tiers of shelves and disperses forces associated with the load on the shelves is still desired.